New Year, new resolve

Or just back to reality. Have decided to sell all 3 Crowns to make room for the constant flow of new (old) cars that I seem to have a knack of finding. And I need the money to build a new garage to house all of these.

This is my newest find as on Jan 2nd, 2011. A time capsule in a 1977 Honda Civic, right here in West Seattle. Been in storage for 21 years and has a brand new engine, never even been started.

Winter is here, time to work on the Crown

Just got the new 16x24 shed built to house the 3 crowns for parts/dismantling.

I thought that I would restore the green wagon back to factory original but then decided to put in a 7MGE from a Cressida and make it a nice daily driver.

Another wagon

Had to do it... bought the 1978 Datsun 810 wagon with only 60k on it. I had to!

Car arrives tomorrow. Can't wait to have a poop brown wagon with wood grain!

Love that old j-tin.

I do love wagons

Saw this one on Craigslist on Sept 25, have to go look at it. LOVE the wood paneling on it. What better way to have a wagon from Japan... make it look American.

Who knows, may add it to my collection. After all it only has 60,000 miles on it.

Long time between posts....

But bought another 67 Crown wagon from Indiana. Been in storage since the mid 80's and in better shape than mine so looks like Old Blue will be the donor car to make the new Minty one nice.









Few dings on the back but less rust than mine that was outside for the last 30 years. This has been in storage for many years so I'll see just how good it is when it arrives in the beginning of March.

Interior work

After a few month hiatus, I decided to get some work done on removing parts from the sedan and also getting more taken out of the wagon. Spent time cleaning up the floor to see what was lurking under the carpet and sound deadener.








Seats came out of both cars as well as lots of trim from the sedan parts car for a guy in Thailand wanting to buy lots of trim parts.









Sedan parts car has an amazingly clean and rust free interior, everything came out easy and some pieces are so nice I can reuse them without having them redone.








Found some rust holes on the front passenger side of the wagon, but that was the ONLY place it rusted through. The sedan donor cars has excellent floors so that will be used to section out a piece and weld it in the wagon.

The rest of the wagon floor is solid with just very light surface rust.

The Tailgate opens!

After 8 hours, yes HOURS of drilling, soaking, prying and gutting the tailgate, I pried it open. Worked good once I over came the rust resistance.








Couldn't get to the tailgate from inside very well due to the metal panel that was screwed on below the edge of the tailgate, had to bend it over to get inside.








Had to disassemble the widow regulator (with power motor) to drop the window into the tailgate to get the glass out of the way. That took 3 hours.








Stripped the inside of all the parts, came apart very nicely thank goodness. And no broken parts either. Still have to see if the motor works for the power window.








Lights came out, all the trim came off and can be straightened nicely and polished back to its original beauty.

I got new (used) tail lights from Moon of Japan!







Parts that I took out, all documented so I can box them up and save them for the final assembly